The first detailed look at the CIA's clandestine operations in Laos during the Cold War. During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency's biggest and longest paramilitary operation was in the tiny kingdom of Laos. Hundreds of advisors and support personnel trained and led guerrilla formations across the mountainous Laotian countryside, as well as running smaller road-watch and agent teams that stretched from the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Chinese frontier. Added to this number were hundreds of contract personnel providing covert aviation services.It was dangerous work. On the Memorial Wall at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, nine stars are dedicated to officers who perished in Laos. On top of this are more than one hundred from propriety airlines killed in aviation mishaps between 1961 and 1973. Combined, this grim casualty figure is orders of magnitude larger than any other CIA paramilitary operation.But for the Foreign Intelligence officers at Langley, Laos was more than a paramilitary battleground. Because of its geographic location as a buffer state, as well as its trifurcated political structure, Laos was a unique Cold War melting pot. All three of the Lao political factions, including the communist Pathet Lao, had representation in Vientiane. The Soviet Union had an extremely active embassy in the capital, while the People's Republic of China--though in the throes of the Cultural Revolution--had multiple diplomatic outposts across the kingdom. So, too, did both North and South Vietnam. All of this made Laos fertile ground for clandestine operations. This book comprehensively details the cloak-and-dagger side of the war in Laos for the first time, from agent recruitments to servicing dead-drops in Vientiane.

Spies on the Mekong: CIA Clandestine Operations in Laos

History

Conboy, Ken

Asia

Casemate

Today the vast archipelago of Southeast Asia islands known as Indonesia is in the headlines because of political instability, religious tension, and violence in the streets. Forty years ago similar conditions led the Central Intelligence Agency to mount a top-secret covert action campaign designed to hold that nation's left-leaning President Sukarno's feet to the fire and prevent a strategic crossroad from falling into the communist camp. The Agency supported rebels with weapons, planes, and a memorable cast of bigger-than-life American agents. In a fast-paced, engrossing narrative evoking the novels of John LeCarré and Graham Greene, the authors provide the first unclassified, detailed case study of an operation that has escaped public scrutiny for decades. Their work adds significantly to our understanding of the CIA and American involvement in Asia.\nDrawing on declassified documents and an extraordinary number of interviews with CIA and Indonesian participants, Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison reconstruct the delicate, dangerous game played by American intelligence agents across the Indonesian archipelago. This is a story of ideologues and soldiers of fortune--historic CIA legends like Allen Dulles and Franklin Wisner, and notorious special operators like Tony "Poe" Poshepny, whose reputation reached mythic proportions later in Laos, and Allen Pope, an indefatigable B-26 pilot who was captured and sentenced to die. But it also includes the transfixing exploits of Montana smokejumpers, Polish aircrews, Muslim anti-communist guerrillas, U.S. Navy submarine crews, and Filipino mercenary pilots flying P-51 Mustangs.\nWith the problems in today's Indonesia far from solved and the complex U.S.-Indonesian relationship coming under close scrutiny, this fascinating account of an American covert operation gone bad will play a significant role in shedding new light on the CIA's efforts in Southeast Asia.

Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958

MORRISON, JAMES

Naval_Institute_Press

CIA Paramilitary Operations in Tibet is the story of how the US government – primarily through the CIA and often in cooperation with India – came to harness, nurture, and encourage Tibetan defiance in one of the most extreme covert campaigns of the Cold War. In particular, it details an important chapter in the CIA’s paramilitary history. In Tibet, new kinds of equipment – aircraft and parachutes, for example – were combat-tested under the most extreme conditions imaginable. New communications techniques were tried and perfected. In many cases, these lessons learned would be applied to other Cold War battlefields like Vietnam, Laos, and elsewhere. Tibet, therefore, became a vital proving ground for CIA case officers and their spycraft.\nCIA Paramilitary Operations in Tibet includes over 60 color and black and white photographs of the participants in the campaign and the insignia of the organizations involved, along with specially commissioned color artworks illustrating the aircraft employed in the skies above Tibet.

CIA Paramilitary Operations in Tibet: 1957-1974 (Asia@War)

Helion and Company

Best known by their French acronym for Forces Armées du Royaume - FAR - the Royal Lao Armed Forces were the official defense force of the Kingdom of Laos - what is now the Lao People's Democratic Republic - from 1949 until 1975. Founded in 1947, when King Sisavang Vong declared Laos an independent nation (and a Kingdom from 1949), the FAR originally included a collection of pre-existing Lao police and militarized constabulary units, regular indigenous colonial troops and locally raised irregular auxiliaries. While the latter two were described in the first two volumes of this mini-series, the emphasis in The Erawan War, Volume 3 is on the FAR, the build-up of which was constantly hampered by the developments in the First Indochina War in neighboring Vietnam. Unsurprisingly, it was only in 1952 that the National Laotian Army - the predecessor of the Royal Lao Army - began to take shape, and only in 1961 that the Laotian Armed Forces were officially renamed the Royal Lao Armed Forces.Plagued by an ineffective leadership at senior levels, and often suffering from chain-of-command problems, the FAR exerted little control over the regional commands and local military commanders for much of the 1960s. A country with a long-standing tradition of warlords - or local power-brokers - and the strong influence of an urban elite aristocracy, Laos took time to build-up effective armed forces, which reached their high tide in the second half of the 1960s, thanks to growing amounts of military aid from the USA. Eventually, the Royal Lao Armed Forces included not only a number of training centers, and several elite units, but the Royal Lao Army, the Royal Lao Air Force and the Royal Lao Navy, all of which fought a bitter war against the North Vietnamese and their local allies until the downfall of the Laotian Kingdom in 1975.Richly illustrated with authentic original photographs and custom-drawn color artworks, The Erawan War, Volume 3 is a highly authoritative single-point source of reference on the build-up and operational history of the FAR.

The Erawan War: Volume 3: The Royal Lao Armed Forces 1961-1974 (Asia@War)

During a National Security Council meeting in March 1971, Henry Kissinger commented to those around the table, "When the CIA reaches the point of having the largest army in Southeast Asia, we better review the program!" He was referring to the secret war brewing in Laos, where the Central Intelligence Agency was training, funding, and leading tens of thousands of indigenous guerrillas within the kingdom and, occasionally, across its borders.The Erawan War mini-series strips away the veil surrounding this conflict, recounting in detail the CIA's largest paramilitary operation of the Cold War, as well as the Royalist armed forces that battled for decades against communist opponents. It includes hundreds of outstanding photos featuring case officers, military hardware, and battle scenes. These volumes are a must for anyone interested in the Vietnam War, military history, special forces units, and CIA paramilitary operations.

The Erawan War: Volume 1: The CIA Paramilitary Campaign in Laos, 1961-1969 (Asia@War)

Military

During a closed-door meeting of Washington policy makers on 31 March 1971, a senior CIA officer informed National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger that the agency was controlling up to 8 divisions of indigenous troops in Laos. “When the CIA reaches the point of having the largest army in Southeast Asia,” retorted Kissinger, “we better review the program!”\nThe Erawan War, Volume 2 details how the CIA operation in Laos reached that point, becoming its largest paramilitary operation of the Cold War. With photos and maps, it covers the wide range of CIA-supported units in Laos, from guerrilla regiments that went toe-to-toe with the North Vietnamese army in pitched campaigns, to top-secret commandos that crossed borders to wage clandestine sabotage attacks.

The Erawan War: Volume 2: The CIA Paramilitary Campaign in Laos, 1969-1974 (Asia@War)

Decades before al-Qaeda took shape, religious radicals in Southeast Asia were laying the groundwork for a struggle to achieve a backward-looking utopia. This is the story of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the secretive organization that spans no less than half a dozen nations and seeks the full implementation of their intolerant take on Islam. In The Second Front: Inside Asia's Most Dangerous Terrorist Network, best-selling author Ken Conboy pieces together the planning and execution of JI's most deadly terrorist acts from exclusive interviews and classified reports. In details never before revealed, it delves into the minds of the group's leaders - from the professorial bomb expert Azhari to the al-Qaeda proxy Hambali. From the shadows of the Hindu Kush to battlefields on the Spice Islands, The Second Front peels back the veil of secrecy and chronicles the successes in bringing down this network, as well as exposes the missed opportunities by regional governments to prevent terrorist acts and sectarian violence that have taken the lives of thousands.KEN CONBOY, the bestselling author of INTEL: Inside Indonesia's Intelligence Service and KOPASSUS: Inside Indonesia's Special Forces, is country manager for Risk Management Advisory, a private security consultancy in Jakarta. Prior to that, he served as deputy director at the Asian Studies Center, an influential Washington-based think tank, where his duties including writing policy papers for the U.S. Congress and Executive on economic and strategic relations with the nations of South and Southeast Asia. A graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and of Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, Conboy was also a visiting fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and has lived in Indonesia since 1992.

The Second Front: Inside Jemaah Islamiyah, Asia's Most Dangerous Terrorist Network

Equinox Publishing

For more than half a century, the elite units of the Indonesian Armed Forces have been in the forefront of that country's brushfire wars, counter-guerrilla campaigns, counter-terrorist battles, and police actions. They have also dominated Indonesian politics for most of the decades since independence. Now for the first in print, a comprehensive guide to the uniforms and insignia used by the commandos and paratroopers of the Indonesian Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Police. In this illustrated supplement, hundreds of color photographs document the heraldry and rich histories of these special forces, from their origins to the present day.KEN CONBOY heads Risk Management Advisory, a security consultancy in Jakarta. A graduate of Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Conboy also studied at Sophia University in Tokyo and was a visiting fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. A resident of Indonesia since 1992, he is the author of more than two dozen books on intelligence and military history.

Elite: The Special Forces of Indonesia 1950-2008

Equinox Pub

For more than half a century, the elite units of the Indonesian Armed Forces have been in the forefront of that country's brushfire wars, counter-guerrilla campaigns, counter-terrorist battles, and police actions. They have also dominated Indonesian politics for most of the decades since independence. Now for the first time in print, a history of all the commando and airborne formations in the Indonesian Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, and Police. From battlefields across the Indonesian archipelago and beyond, get a detailed understanding of these units from their origins to the present day.
KEN CONBOY heads Risk Management Advisory, a security consultancy in Jakarta. A graduate of Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Conboy also studied at Sophia University in Tokyo and was a visiting fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. A resident of Indonesia since 1992, he is the author of more than two dozen books on intelligence and military history.

The first comprehensive history of Forces Armées Nationales Khmères - the Cambodian National Armed Forces - this fully-illustrated volume highlights the quarter of a million members of the Cambodian army, air force, and navy that saw daily combat during the five tumultuous years of the Khmer Republic. Although the war in Cambodia has been dubbed a "sideshow" to the larger, more widely reported conflict in neighboring Vietnam, the battles in Cambodia-a country smaller than the state of Oklahoma-were pivotal to U.S. foreign policy and played a critical factor in the final years of the Vietnam War.
Ken Conboy heads Risk Management Advisory, a security consultancy in Jakarta. A graduate of Georgetown University and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Conboy studied at Sophia University in Tokyo and was a visiting fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. A resident of Indonesia since 1992, he is author of more than two dozen books on intelligence and military history.

Fank: A History of the Cambodian Armed Forces 1970-1975

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Conboy, Ken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Conboy, Ken

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Conboy, Ken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Spies on the Mekong: CIA Clandestine Operations in Laos

Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958

CIA Paramilitary Operations in Tibet: 1957-1974 (Asia@War)

The Erawan War: Volume 3: The Royal Lao Armed Forces 1961-1974 (Asia@War)

The Erawan War: Volume 1: The CIA Paramilitary Campaign in Laos, 1961-1969 (Asia@War)

The Erawan War: Volume 2: The CIA Paramilitary Campaign in Laos, 1969-1974 (Asia@War)

The Second Front: Inside Jemaah Islamiyah, Asia's Most Dangerous Terrorist Network

Elite: The Special Forces of Indonesia 1950-2008

Elite: The Special Forces of Indonesia 1950-2008

Fank: A History of the Cambodian Armed Forces 1970-1975